Survival - - Page 3

Embrace the Loneliness & Regain Strength

hilosopher Paul Tillich once wrote, “Loneliness expresses the pain of being alone and solitude expresses the glory of being alone.” Whether you lose your spouse or partner due to divorce, death or a breakup, suddenly finding yourself alone over the age of 40 can be disconcerting, upsetting and painful. Like many who end up alone after being coupled for years, your first instinct may be to rush out and find someone new. While there’s nothing wrong with doing that, you should consider staying single and alone for a while. As noted by Tillich, there’s a distinction between loneliness and solitude. By embracing the latter, you can get more in touch with yourself and grow as a person.

Loneliness versus Solitude

If you’re alone and feeling lonely, it means that you’re lamenting the fact that you don’t have anyone with you. That’s a perfectly normal and human way to feel, but it can be overcome. Being okay with being alone means enjoying your solitude and making the most of it. Sure, we all want someone to share our lives with, but most of us experience periods of solitude at various points in our lives.

Loss, Fear and Despair

When a relationship ends, the feelings of loss can be profound. That’s true whether your partner left or passed away or if you left. Even when a breakup is absolutely necessary, it’s not a fun thing to experience. Unfortunately, it’s easy to conflate those initial feelings of fear and despair with loneliness. In other words, you may confuse your feelings of mourning the lost relationship with being unhappy with solitude. When you really sit down and think about it, though, you’re mostly alone even when you are partnered.

As uncomfortable as feelings of despair and fear can be, pushing them aside is a mistake. Instead, be kind to yourself while allowing yourself to really feel those emotions. This gives you a chance to work through those emotions so that they don’t spring back up at awkward times. For instance, without allowing yourself plenty of time to grieve and reflect, those feelings could pop back up just when you’re trying to establish a relationship with someone new. Your new relationship could be over before it begins. That’s not fair to your new partner, and it’s not fair to you, either.

How does one go about embracing feelings of fear, despair and loneliness? Wallowing in those feelings isn’t the way to go. However, thinking them through and reflecting on how they are affecting you are steps in the right direction. This can be accomplished simply by sitting quietly and thinking. However, many people prefer to unburden themselves to friends, relatives and other loved ones. Depending on the severity of those feelings, you may even want to meet with a therapist to work through those emotions. Another great option is to pour it all out into a journal. Whether you write it with pen and paper or on a computer, the processing of putting those thoughts into words can be extremely cathartic.

You’re Alone: Now What?

After the initial – and very understandable – stage of going through feelings of grief and loss, you may feel ready to get back out there and start dating. What’s the rush, though? By embracing your solitude, you can focus on yourself for a while. You will still have more healing to do, and you’re going to want to be in the best shape possible for whomever you start sharing your life with next. Instead of looking at your new solitude as a bad thing, try looking at it as an opportunity to grow.

Move Onward and Upward

A great way to embrace loneliness and regain strength is by working on yourself. This doesn’t mean that you have to do anything drastic. It could be something as simple as adding an hour of exercise to your day or getting a new haircut. If you have issues that have been pushed aside in the past, including debt, excess weight or much-needed home repairs, now is the time to tackle them. When you take care of business, your confidence and happiness will soar. Confident, happy men are much more appealing than miserable men.

Learn to Like Your Own Company

Sometimes, people are uncomfortable with being alone because, on a deep, subconscious level, they aren’t happy with themselves. Perhaps you just can’t sit still and be alone. Just because it’s never come naturally to you doesn’t mean that you can’t learn to enjoy it. Like anything else, practice makes perfect. Your old routine, which included a lot of time and space for your partner, is out the window. It’s time to put a new one into effect. By staying alone for a while, you’ll give yourself the chance to adopt a new routine, and this will make it easier to ultimately enjoy solitude.

You know that old cliché about how you have to love yourself before you can expect anyone else to do likewise? It’s true. When you’re constantly around other people, you never have time to discover the things that you really like about yourself, and you’re less likely to truly love yourself. By looking at it from that perspective, you should be able to resist the urge to constantly surround yourself with others. After all, if you’re scared of being alone, there’s a good chance that you’ll end up with the wrong person simply because you’re so anxious to avoid solitude.

Discover the Peace of Solitude

At first, being alone may fill you with dread and anxiety. As you become more accustomed to solitude, though, you’ll start noticing many good things. Peacefulness is a prime example. Once you’re comfortable in your own skin and okay with being alone, the feelings of peace and contentment that you will experience are sure to be profound. You may even learn to prize your solitude and will be more discerning about who you bring into your life in the future. In the end, being alone could turn out to be a blessing in disguise.

7 Ways to Protect Your Assets

ou’ve worked hard all your adult life. Maybe you’ve built up your savings, you’ve acquired additional properties or you’ve built a portfolio of other valuable assets. At this point in your life, you may be worried that all that hard work will be for nothing, and you’ll lose everything you’ve saved.

It’s possible; in fact, anything that you’ve built can be lost in a literal blink of an eye due to sudden bankruptcy, divorce or a lawsuit. There are many possibilities that you probably haven’t even considered. For example, if your teenage child were at fault in a car accident, your assets could be on the line. If your neighbor accidentally becomes injured on your property, your portfolio of assets could be taken to compensate your neighbor.

You don’t want this to be you.

You want to save your assets to give to your family. You want to have the opportunity to take everything you’ve worked hard to create, and you want to pass it all on to your family. In order to do this, you have to protect everything that you’ve crated.

Consider these 7 ways to protect your most valuable assets:

1. Increase your insurance

The more insurance you carry, the more protected your assets will be if there is an accident or other unexpected event. Make sure that you cover your bases and invest in several different types of insurance, depending on your lifestyle choices and living situation.

Consider each of these types:

Homeowners insurance – This is a necessity and not only to protect your valuable property if you own your home. Your homeowner’s insurance should include liability coverage in case you’re sued by someone who is injured on your property.
Commercial liability insurance – If you own you a business, you must invest in this insurance in order to protect your company and your assets in case of an employee’s injury.
Worker’s compensation insurance – If you own your business, you must also invest in this insurance which is mandatory in most states as well.
Auto insurance – Don’t be content with minimum coverage auto insurance, especially as your personal assets continue to increase. Your total liability coverage for your family’s vehicles should be at least equal to your total assets.
Umbrella coverage – This type of policy acts as a strong back-up insurance plan in the event that one of your other coverages, such as auto or homeowners, is exhausted.
Long-term care insurance – As you advance in age, this type of insurance may become more useful to you. By investing in long-term care insurance, you’re protecting your assets and those of your family from the high costs of in-home or nursing care if you would suffer from a debilitating illness or disability in your later stages of life.

2. Separate your assets

Depending on your home state and its laws, it may be advantageous for you to keep your assets separate from those of your spouse. In the event of a divorce or an accident caused by your spouse, jointly shared assets are split in half. Keeping your own savings account or separate property holdings will prevent you from losing what you’ve worked hard to achieve.

3. Formalize all informal partnerships

Working with a business partner is similar to sharing a joint account. If your partner is liable, your portion of the assets could be at risk as well. Be especially careful of making informal partnerships with friends or acquaintances. Create formal paperwork that finalizes all relationships and the sharing of assets. This isn’t being a bad friend; it’s just good business.

4. Create business entities

If you own a small business or you freelance work on the side, you should consider creating a business entity to help protect your personal assets. Whether you choose to make an LLC or a corporation from your business ventures, this entity will shield your personal assets from any lawsuits that are filed against your company.

5. Begin an asset protection trust

Rather than storing your assets in offshore accounts, several states are now allowing asset protection trusts that allow you to move a portion of your assets into a trust that will be granted to your children or other beneficiaries. In order to qualify for this protection, you must agree that the trust is irrevocable and that it will be run by an independent trustee.

6. Take advantage of retirement accounts

Under federal law, you can enjoy unlimited asset protection for many retirement plans and up to one million dollars in assets in an IRA. Some of the stipulations for retirement accounts will depend on the laws in your home state, but this option may be able to protect at least a portion of your personal assets.

7. Consider homestead exemptions

Many states now provide homestead exemptions that go into effect to protect an individual’s home equity if he or she would declare personal bankruptcy. If your state is one of those participating in this plan, you may want to consider investing more money toward your mortgage principal in order to build up a higher level of equity.

These are not the only methods to protect your personal assets, but these are a goo way for you to get started. No matter how you choose to protect your assets, you don’t want to delay your efforts. The longer you wait, the more risk you face.

10 Reasons You Should Keep Your Men Friends’ Close

omen are wonderful, and your woman fills your life with love and warmth. Still, the old joke about a war of the sexes holds a great deal of truth. Women typically see relationships quite differently than men.

For most women, a romantic relationship deeply colors all aspects of their lives. For just about any self-respecting man, a romantic relationship is a major part of life that still must be kept away from the clubhouse. Women often get mad at their men over this strong exhibition of masculinity.

That’s okay, though. It’s par for the course. You saw that cliché coming, didn’t you?

Keeping your buddies close is one of the most important aspects of playing through without being struck down by the lightning zaps of a normal relationship filled with occasional storminess and squalls. You probably knew this already, but expanding on it may help a bit. Let’s wander around the ten top reasons to stay firm with your men friends!

1. A man is not a decorative plant.
No matter what loud-mouthed feminists like to say about total equality between the sexes, men are men. They need to step outside the home and do manly stuff with buddies who also like to roam around doing manly stuff. Suddenly whacking to other places little round balls that had been peacefully minding their own business on calm blankets of grass, going to crowded stadiums to cheer as large guys head-butt each other during titanic struggles over the possession of air-filled, torpedo-shaped balls and gathering in smoke-filled dens to swap witticisms over a nice game of poker all qualify as genuine markers of manly men.

2. Fair’s fair.
Women do generally like to have their gal pals for chattering and nattering about everything under the sun. It’s ridiculous to expect that men won’t have their own pals for talking soberly about important matters such as which baseball teams are composed of bums who will never win the pennant and how to escape a deep sand trap without wildly digging a deep hole.

3. Gender differences matter.
Your girlfriend or wife can also be your best friend, and it’s perfectly okay to have casual women friends, but men friends are different. Just as most women are much more comfortable about discussing certain matters with other women, especially love and relationships, men are much more comfortable with the other guys when talking about subjects that would be awkward to bring up around women.

4. Friendships need exercise to be healthy.
Letting the seed of jealousy in a possessive woman grow into a carnivorous weed that consumes all your time and energy outside of work will slowly strangle your ability to have real buddies. Friendships die if you rarely ever feed them. You might eventually find yourself staring blankly at an old friend you’ve known since college. Go do stuff with your buddies regularly!

5. The old boys’ club is real.
We call it networking these days, but having contacts that may lead to a better job or other opportunities doesn’t just happen. Your men friends aren’t just your buddies; they’re gateways to the wider world. Letting their memories of you fade into the mist could mean stagnating in the backwater of a nominally terrific set of relationships filled only with your nearest and dearest.

6. Women are weird.
Yes, they are weird in a delightful way, but the way so many of them think is like that of a Martian, or was it a Venusian? If you don’t hang out with the fellows on a regular basis, you may start to feel your antennae twitching as they detect subtle emotions in relationships that need to be explored at great length. If this weirdness isn’t stopped in its tracks, you’ll soon find yourself immersed in picking out absolutely the best color for the bathroom drapes. The horror only increases after that!

7. Relationships don’t always last.
Painful as it may be to contemplate, many relationships reveal themselves as having a fixed expiration date. Modern divorce rates are high, and breakups with girlfriends slam in with the tides. Keeping in touch with your single or married men friends’ means keeping up the chances of later dating the attractive, single women they may know at work or through family members.

8. Absence makes the heart fonder.
This old saw is totally true. Being together too much can make little personal flaws and quirks loom larger and larger until they turn into cats and dogs fighting it out with much blood and fur flying. Prudently dividing your free time between your loved ones and your closest buddies will harmonize the celestial spaces and all that groovy jive.

9. Broader activities increase your personal development.
Regularly smashing about the bigger world with your men friends’ means continuing to mature intellectually and emotionally. You’ll become a more interesting person to yourself and to others, and your woman will pick up on that even if she sulkily acts otherwise.

10. Wusses are pusses, but he-men win.
Pusses are harmless little kittens that women like to pet and cuddle and put into cages to be neutered at the veterinarian when they grow troublesome and noisy. The dirty little secret of relationships is that while a woman may say she loves you for paying lots of attention to her and supposedly meeting her every emotional need, her innermost being almost certainly wants her man to be a swaggering bad boy who goes his own way. This deep biological imperative goes all the way back to when Ugg the Caveman clonked a lion over the head with his knobby club while Muna the Cavewoman squealed with fear and appreciation from the top of a large rock. You need not sport a motorcycle jacket with chains hanging everywhere or start fights at bars to be a real man, but you do need to make your own way across the whole eighteen holes with your balls intact. This refers to your golf balls, naturally — what kind of analogy did you think this was?

Your men friends are an essential element of being a real guy. They smirk at dumb jokes, occasionally make crude remarks, scratch themselves in public and even drink beer as if it were mere flavored water. This is the way of men, and without it, the world would be a poorly maintained six-hole course with dying grass.

7 Things Men should Know after the Divorce

hen life throws you a curve ball, the sensible option is to keep on playing like the pros always do. Life-changing events such as divorce, the breakup of a long-term relationship or the death of a partner may throw you for a loop. No matter the cause of the schism, starting over can be disconcerting especially if you can’t even find the TV remote on your own.

1. Gather the Basic Paperwork

To get started on establishing your new routine as a newly-single man, you will need to have a handle on the basic papers attesting to your single-hood. Obtain copies of the divorce decree or the death certificate, whichever is applicable in your case. When applying for certified copies, make sure to include extra sets in your request as financial institutions will require copies for their files to support any changes requested on your account.

2. Where is that Checkbook?

Typically, couples would have a household account for paying and tracking bills and other household expenses. Quite often, one partner takes charge of bookeeping and household management with the other contributing financially but without major administrative input. All is well until the day the relationship is severed.

Post-divorce, the matter of checking accounts and bills would have been neatly addressed by your divorce decree. Accounts are listed, examined, adjudicated and closed according to your agreement. There is no errant checkbook to speak of – only a clean parting of ways.

However, with the death of a partner, your routine is upended especially if the event was unexpected and your partner left few clues regarding the practical details of household budgets and maintenance. Finding the checkbook and ledger pertaining to this account would be the logical first step in your financial housekeeping. Locate online files that may refer to this account and review the pattern of expenses as this will indicate the bills that should be paid regularly to ensure that your household will keep on running smoothly. In most states, survivors have 30 to 60 days to use a joint account to settle the estate. After the grace period, you will be asked to open a new account in your name.

3. Who to Pay to Keep the Lights On

Before the Internet became so prevalent, all it took to organize bill payments was to go through the mail, and line up billing statements. With online access, you may need to recover or recreate a list of accounts and regularly scheduled payments that may include include rent or mortgage, phone, cable payments and utility services covering electricity, water and sewer bills.

If your partner has been making online instead of mail-in payments, knowing the passwords would help tremendously. If you do not know the account passwords, contact the respective companies to explain your life-changing event and get them to update the account.

4. A new Budget for a new Lifestyle

Often, the partner handling the household books was doing the job so efficiently that you were never bothered with mundane matters such as keeping track of expenses, paying bills on time and avoiding costly penalties for missed or late payments. Since your life situation has changed, your expenses will vary. Create a budget reflective of your current circumstances.

5. Insurance Coverage and Payouts

If you are the beneficiary of insurance payouts, you have to contact the insurance companies and file the papers according to their guidelines. If minor children are in the equation, you will also have to take charge of filing those papers. Aside from life insurance policies, health insurance coverage will also be an issue especially if the deceased partner was the primary insured. Fortunately, most insurance policies will provide continuing coverage for survivors subject to restructured premium payments.

Insurance policies are often a major sticking point in divorce proceedings, so these issues are clarified as the divorce is finalized. Review your insurance coverage and adjust as you see fit based on your new lifestyle.

When insurance details are not clear cut after the death of a spouse or partner, examine the bank and credit card statements closely to look for payments made to insurance carriers.

6. Your Life on a Spreadsheet

After a monumental change in your life situation, it is important to have a clear idea of where you stand financially. A spreadsheet showing your assets and liabilities would be a good start. Rough out a list of what you have and what you owe, marking up items that may need further research. Refine this list as you go about finalizing the divorce or closing the estate. This spreadsheet will become the basis of making new goals, reinventing your life and planning for retirement.

7. Hire a Financial Planner

Disassociating yourself from a long term relationship is fraught with complications. You will need to close old accounts and establish new ones in your name only. You may need to change beneficiaries on existing insurance policies. Any financial recompense must be optimized for the benefit of your remaining household.

A qualified financial planner specializing in estate planning for people emerging from a divorce or recently widowed may help to redefine your goals and keep you on track. Embrace your new status, and keep on moving forward.